Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media report them inadequately. We blog here because our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, New York, Madrid, London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening and why. This ongoing war is killing us.

Friday, January 16, 2015

16-Jan-15: They're incubating terror-minded journalists in Jordan but they have an answer to all the criticisms

We wrote here over the past five weeks about some outrageous developments at a graduate school for aspiring journalists in Jordan founded by a former CNN on-camera reporter with the very considerable help of a number of Western governments, NGOs and corporate donors.

Without retelling the story in detail, it's about an attempt to graft Western journalistic values onto a cadre of Arab journalists most of whom live and work in a country that the respected human rights watchdog organization Freedom House (in its 2014 update) calls “Not Free” with a score of 6 on a scale of 7 for freedom of the press. (7 is the worst score.) And Jordan is not on the road to getting better just yet. Reporters Without Frontiers, which also tracks press freedom, says Jordan’s authorities further tightened their existing grip on its media in the past year. Not a happy place in which to live or work.So all things considered, the students fortunate enough to be accepted into the Jordan Media Institute are the beneficiaries of considerable foreign largesse, goodwill, sponsorship, guidance and opportunity. This is sure to turn them into reporters that any great metropolitan newspaper would be proud of, right?Not so right. As we wrote here last month:

Visit thehomepage of the JMI websiteand you see abutton that links to a related websitehosting the work-product of JMI’s own cadre of young journalists. It's in Arabic only, naturally enough; these contents arenot meant for the Western sponsors and international partners. But intentionally or not, it is these pages – along with the invaluable help ofGoogle Translate’s Arabic-to-English service - that shine a revealing light for non-Arabic speakers like us on what all that NGO and government money, inspiration and support is enabling for this “unparalleled centre of excellence in the Middle East”.On every page of the site,under the headline “Success Models”, a journalist called Tamimi is profiled. She is the murderer of our daughter, Malki.

In the weeks since then, we have made efforts to reveal this to the providers of “in-kind, financial or technical assistance” whose names and symbols or logos appear on the JMI's trophy wall here. A partial list includes these names:

We have already made direct contact with all of them. Some have responded with great understanding, and have told us what they plan to do. Others - well, we plan to write about them soon.Meanwhile, the JMI carried out a bogus exercise in hiding the offensive article by taking the site itself down, and then removed it from the site. (You can still it here. We took the trouble to ensure it remains archived and accessible, realizing that it might get hidden at some point, as indeed it was.)We learned a few days ago that there has now been an official response by the JMI to the charges we published about their incubation of a new generation of young, terrorism-loving media professionals: the JMI published a retraction of their Ahlam Tamimi "success model" article on January 7, 2015 (here). But it's not close to what their supporters expected it to be and what their advisers thought they ought to do:

It is in Arabic only.

It appears only on the JMI Journalists website.

No reference to it appears on the JMI's main (English-language, sponsor-focused) site.

It says nothing about the corrosive effect of jihad on the societies which host it.

It says nothing about the immorality of murderous attacks on unarmed innocents, and particularly children.

In fact, it steps carefully around all the issues, speaking instead in grotesque circumlocutions and euphemism. It is 100% fig leaf and 0% substance. Here's the English translation of its key paragraph:

The Institute has received complaints that drew our attention to an article published by one of the students on the "journalists" site, which is run by the students directly and dedicated only to showcase their work. After reviewing this article, it was revealed that it did not abide by the Institute’s values and professional standards therefore it was removed from the site. Here Jordan Media Institute would like to stress that it will continue its efforts to ensure the preservation of professional values and standards and respect them at all times.

For all the JMI's public statements about "preservation of professional values and standards and respect", the only response we have gotten from them - after going through proper channels and addressing them in the politest of terms - has been an offensive one-line email from their director of training referring to junk mail and ignoring the issues.

Jordan's king and queen went to Paris on Sunday. They marched there in the very front row of the huge crowd, among the assembled global VIPs, and stood in solidarity with the "Je suis Charlie" masses. What did they mean? Truly, that's anyone's guess, and we have no interest in being rude or offensive about it. But if marching against the Islamist thugs of Paris was meant to have anything to do with stopping Islamist terror in their own home kingdom, then - as we wrote on Sunday - they would have done better to stay in Amman and do some homework.

As for the political leaders of the countries listed above (as well as the executive managements of the corporates and the NGOs) who have not yet condemned what the Jordanian Media Institute has done, is doing and has attempted to conceal: you know who you are and you know what civilized people ought to be doing now.

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THIS ONGOING WAR is not part of the activity of the Malki Foundation which was founded by us, Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem, on September 9, 2001. But it is inspired by the same tragic circumstances. The Malki Foundation (also known by its Hebrew name: Keren Malki) is a memorial to the life of our daughter, Malki. She's in the photo below this paragraph. Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre in the centre of Jerusalem carried out by Hamas.

Beyond its function as a remembrance of a beautiful life, the foundation provides tangible, concrete, invaluable support daily to several thousand Israeli families from every part of the religious and socio-economic spectrum: Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze and others who care at home for a seriously disabled child.

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This Ongoing War: About this blog

Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, in New York, in Madrid, in London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening. This ongoing war is killing us.